Warehouse 13 Reviews: Season 3, Episode 3

Episode 3: Love Sick

This one starts in Salt Lake City, where a patient is brought to a hospital with very unusual symptoms. She goes into cardiac arrest and when the doctors try to give her an adrenaline shot, the needle breaks on her skin. The defib machine blows up when they try to shock her and we see her skin seems to have turned to a rocky material. The hospital calls the CDC and a special consultant comes in … Vanessa Calder, Artie’s crush. She suspects an artifact is involved and calls Artie in. At the Warehouse, Artie is thrilled that he’ll be seeing Vanessa again and is all gussied up, which everyone else notices. (Pete: “Are you wearing Spanx?”; Artie: “Stop looking at me.”) Claudia offers to go along, since Artie’s not great with the sight of blood.

In Utah, Artie is obviously nervous at seeing Vanessa again, but she seems happy to see him. (And she proves she’s cool by getting Claudia’s Batman reference.) They check out the dead woman and Vanessa explains that all her internal organs have metamorphosed into diatomaceous earth … clay. And this isn’t the first incident; there are three other bodies in the morgue also turned to clay. Vanessa worries it might signal some kind of artifact outbreak. The next morning at the Warehouse, Pete and Myka (whose hair is now blonde) wake up naked in Artie’s bed. They both freak out and blame each other (Pete: “I’m good, but I’ve never changed a woman’s hair color.”), but neither one can remember how they got there. They’re sure they didn’t get drunk—since they aren’t hung over—but they’re really mystified when they find Artie’s toothbrush in the bed.

In Utah, Vanessa tells Artie and Claudia all the victims have been female, but there’s no other connection. They can’t get DNA the conventional way, but Vanessa has Rosalind Franklin’s DNA sequencer and thinks that might work. Artie asks Vanessa to dinner (well, technically she asks him). At the Warehouse, Pete and Myka use the Durational Spectrometer to view what happened in Artie’s room over the last five hours, but it only shows them sleeping (and Pete making a phone call), not banging. Myka mentions that they could’ve banged before that, so they still can’t be sure if something happened or not. Artie calls to give Pete shit for leaving him a voicemail at three in the morning … apparently he sang the Pina Colada Song. They don’t let Artie know anything’s wrong and Myka figures they must’ve been affected by an artifact. They find several anomalies in the Warehouse log and decide to check them out. They also realize Steve is missing and really get worried when they find his cell in the office.

In Utah, the DNA analysis reveals silicon-based sequences instead of the usual carbon-based ones, meaning the victims actually had their DNA rewritten. Artie notices some strings of numbers in the sequences; the digits 101 repeat over and over, which Claudia says is computer code. Artie figures the victims must’ve been infected by a computer virus, enhanced by an artifact. Artie makes a grand doomsday pronouncement about how this could herald the end of humanity, but we soon see the answer is much more banal … some pervo hacker is spying on girls through their webcams and he’s wearing some kind of amulet that sends a blast of magical power through the camera and into the woman, though she doesn’t seem to notice.

At the hospital, Artie has called in Hugo Miller to help sort out the whole “computer virus infecting humans” thing. Artie regrets that when he finds out Hugo and Vanessa used to be pretty close … and Hugo seems to want to start right where they left off. (Hugo: “Remember how we used to hang out in the Dark Vault and play records, you and me and Mary Jane.”; Artie: “What, we had an agent named Mary Jane? I don’t remember …”; Claudia: “Good God, where do you come from?”) They’re interrupted when the latest virus victim is brought in.

At the Warehouse, Pete and Myka trace their movements the previous night to a Tesla coil they were using for target practice. That triggers a memory of them teaching Steve to use the Tesla guns. Steve had told them he was gay (which prompted Pete to take his shirt off to give Steve some eye candy) and when Pete was showing off he knocked a couple of W.C. Fields’ juggling balls off a shelf. He and Myka caught them, but the balls cause drunkenness and blackouts, so they immediately began acting like drunken idiots. In Utah, Hugo says he can write a counter program to get rid of the virus if they can find the artifact. Artie is jealous of the easy familiarity Hugo has with Vanessa, so he takes Claudia to check the latest victim’s apartment.

At the Warehouse, Myka and Pete find more artifacts out of place, including Walt Disney’s paintbrush and Marilyn Monroe’s hair brush (which explains Myka’s blonde locks). They have another memory of Steve trying to reason with them and them leading him off somewhere after lifting his Tesla and leaving it behind. They realize they did something bad to Steve and had better find him fast. In Utah, Claudia tries to get Artie to talk about his feelings for Vanessa, but he just says he shouldn’t have let himself hope for a chance at romance. Claudia finds a sticker on the victim’s computer and figures out that all the victims had used credit cards at the same computer store, Tiger Direct.

At Tiger Direct, we see the computer perv (Tyler) spying on more women. His boss catches him and fires him on the spot. Tyler heads outside to his skeevy-looking van and decides to get some payback. Artie, Claudia, Hugo, and Vanessa show up at the store minutes later looking for the guy who serviced all the victims’ computers. The manager says he just fired Tyler and Claudia runs outside to look for him. Every monitor in the store suddenly lights up with Tyler’s face on it. After revealing a few choice secrets about the staff, Tyler cuts the power in the store. His medallion glows again and sends more weird energy through his computer into the store’s monitors. Artie recognizes the danger and warns Vanessa, so the two of them are the only ones unaffected by the energy, which blasts into everyone else’s eyes, including Hugo’s. Vanessa uses her CDC authorization to lock down the store, to prevent the virus from spreading.

Artie finds out Tyler hangs out at a coffee shop nearby, so he tells Claudia (who’s safe outside) to find him and get the artifact. Hugo works on the anti-virus program while he still can, but Vanessa figures everyone in the store will be dead within six hours. At the Warehouse, Pete and Myka have more memories and finally remember where Steve is. They lured him to the Bronze Sector and bronzed him as a joke, but when they tried to unbronze him, they needed a DNA sample from an authorized Warehouse agent … which explains why they had Artie’s toothbrush. In Utah, Hugo is getting worse and laments the time he lost that could’ve been spent with Vanessa. Artie says they’ll cure him and he can have a second chance. Hugo doesn’t seem to notice Artie seething with jealousy and asks if Artie found anyone, but Artie is distracted by footage of Tyler. (Hugo: “Did you ever find someone, Artie?”; Artie: “Emeth.”; Hugo: “Oh, I didn’t realize you were homosexual; are you what they call a bear?”) But Artie’s talking about the Hebrew word “Emeth” (which means “truth”) that he noticed on Tyler’s amulet.

Artie explains the myth of the Golem, created out of clay by Rabbi Loew in Prague hundreds of years ago and animated by writing the word “truth” on its forehead. Artie figures the amulet has corrupted Tyler’s computer virus so it turns people into clay. He calls Claudia to tell her the amulet is the artifact. The store manager starts showing symptoms and gets all paranoid. He lifts the security guard’s gun and says he’s leaving the store. Vanessa tries to stop him, but he transmits the virus to her through eye contact. She keels over and the manager heads for the door. Artie and Hugo realize the virus is mutating and can now spread person-to-person.

Claudia spots Tyler and chases him in a mini-parkour sequence set to Joan Jett’s “Bad Reputation”; Claudia gets all the cool songs. Tyler jumps across to another roof and Claudia follows, but ends up hanging from the roof’s edge. At the store, a SWAT trooper forces the manager and all the other panicked patrons to stay inside and Artie tells Hugo to finish the anti-virus so they’ll be ready when Claudia gets back. Claudia is still hanging off the roof, but Tyler comes back and pulls her up. She tells him his necklace is bad news and he says his great-uncle gave it to him to ward off evil. Claudia says it’s causing evil, but maybe it’s not too late to fix things.

At the Warehouse, Pete and Myka remember the last piece of the puzzle; they’d gone to Artie’s room to get his toothbrush so they could debronze Steve, but knew they were about to pass out and forget everything. Myka figured if they stripped and got into bed, when they woke up they’d know something impossible had happened and wouldn’t rest until they retraced their steps and found Steve … and it apparently worked. They release Steve from the bronzer and pretend like nothing happened, although I’m sure he can tell they’re lying. In Utah, Artie has to finish the anti-virus program, since Hugo’s sight is gone. Claudia returns with the amulet and Artie uses Francois Villon’s inkwell to make the window intangible so she can get it through to him.

Hugo warns Artie that curing so many people at once might put the amulet’s wearer at risk, but Artie can’t let Vanessa die, so he goes ahead. He runs the anti-virus program and the amulet’s energy flows through all the store monitors, curing everyone instantly but knocking Artie out. (Don’t worry, he recovers right away.) Tyler is arrested and Claudia feels bad since he didn’t know he was hurting anyone. Hugo says he’s leaving Eureka and settling down somewhere more sedate. Artie assumes he means with Vanessa, but she soon lets him know that she doesn’t feel the same way about Hugo that she used to. She’s moved on and wants to keep seeing Artie, which thrills him (and Claudia … she squees right out loud). In a nearby cop car, Tyler meets Marcus Diamond (played by Sasha Roiz from Grimm) and his partner, Agent Stukowski. Stukowski says her employer needs someone who’s good with computers and they drive away with Tyler.